Posted on 01/20/2023 10:19:06 PM PST by SunkenCiv
AbstractPleistocene archaeology records the changing behaviour and capacities of early hominins. These behavioural changes, for example, to stone tools, are commonly linked to environmental constraints. It has been argued that, in earlier times, multiple activities of everyday life were all uniformly conducted at the same spot. The separation of focused activities across different localities, which indicates a degree of planning, according to this mindset characterizes later hominins since only 500,000 years ago. Simbiro III level C, in the upper Awash valley of Ethiopia, allows us to test this assumption in its assemblage of stone tools made only with obsidian, dated to more than 1.2 million years (Myr) old. Here we first reconstruct the palaeoenvironment, showing that the landscape was seasonally flooded. Following the deposition of an accumulation of obsidian cobbles by a meandering river, hominins began to exploit these in new ways, producing large tools with sharp cutting edges. We show through statistical analysis that this was a focused activity, that very standardized handaxes were produced and that this was a stone-tool workshop. We argue that at Simbiro III, hominins were doing much more than simply reacting to environmental changes; they were taking advantage of new opportunities, and developing new techniques and new skills according to them.
(Excerpt) Read more at nature.com ...
full author list:Margherita Mussi, Eduardo Mendez-Quintas, Doris Barboni, Hervé Bocherens, Raymonde Bonnefille, Giuseppe Briatico, Denis Geraads, Rita T. Melis, Joaquin Panera, Laura Pioli, Andrea Serodio Domínguez & Susana Rubio Jara
“A surge in obsidian exploitation more than 1.2 million years ago”
People act like US slavery was the ONLY exploitation of people in human history, yet now it’s show that even the Obsidians were being exploited over a MILLION years ago.
Incredible how IGNORANT people are.
Exploitation of obsidian started gooball warming.
The very stones cry out over racism.:/
I am surprised no one on FR has pointed out the obvious. It’s where getting stoned started. And now look what it has led to. Wonder if obsidian was dirt cheap?
I have a good-sized chunk of Mexican obsidian. I can strike blades as sharp as any razor off that thing.
I know of a number of sources of huge amounts of obsidian in the Oregon mountains. I have a two foot diameter lump from one of them.
There's also evidence from the Wonderwerk Cave in South Africa dated to slightly earlier than this story (1MYA) showing that Homo erectus might already have learned to control fire. The previous landmark was in the Qesem Cave in Israel, and that was a good 600K years earlier.
I wish. I never learned knapping. Also, all of the big obsidian sources I have been to over the years are National Monuments now, and it’s a big no-no to carry any out.
The big piece I have sitting on my side table was smuggled out of the Obsidian Cliffs, in the Three Sisters Wilderness by my father in 1962.
The greenies would consider that practically a hanging offense today.
I know where to find flint locally where I live. My sister built her house on top of an outcropping. I’ve found a number of flakes in her garden, that seem to have been struck off for butchering meat at a hunting camp.
Good flint is all over the place on the U.S. west coast.
I thought we’d had topics about Wonderwerk, Google found it not.
https://freerepublic.com/tag/homoerectus/index
https://freerepublic.com/tag/homonaledi/index
https://freerepublic.com/tag/australopithecus/index
-PJ
I want obsidian roll all night, and party every day.
-PJ
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